9.14.2009

white refugees

"Fifteen years after the end of white minority rule, race is not the issue that dare not speak its name. Instead it is shouted from the rooftops at every opportunity. Its sensitivities pervade political debate, newspaper columns and radio phone-ins. One journalist said to me last week: 'There is a hyper-vigilance that's inevitable after a traumatic event.'"...William Faulkner wrote: 'The past is never dead. It's not even past.' My African-American girlfriend feels that way when she's in South Africa. As a white Englishman, I have to look a little harder, but I can see the old wounds, too. I remember a cynic whispering in my ear: 'The whites are pretending it didn't happen; the blacks are pretending to forgive.'"